Not sure about Shore 💥

Thinking of submitting to Shore Scripts? Here's an honest review.

Hello Messies!

Are screenwriting contests worth the entry fees? It’s a perennial question, and something I’m sure a lot of Messies have a view on. There’s a lot of factors to consider: whether you can afford it, what you hope to get out of it, your level of confidence in your script.

I decided to enter a few contests last year, but with a strict rule of limiting myself to the most established ones. The ones with the most solid recommendations on resources like Script Angel, Lauri Donahue’s list and, of course, Messy Writers. Shore Scripts seemed to get a thumbs up everywhere. So I submitted to their Feature Contest and a few months later was delighted to hear I was a finalist.

With the early deadline of the Shore Scripts Feature contest approaching, I thought Messies might be interested to hear about my experience as a finalist. The Messy admins have let me write this post anonymously (if you know who I am, please don’t out me!) because no-one wants to get a rep as a whingey writer, and my answer to ‘Is Shore Scripts feature contest worth it?’ is… OK, it’s not an outright no. But it’s a big fat not sure.

Of course with any contest the most likely ‘bad’ outcome is that you don’t place. That’s the gamble you take. But you assume that if you’re lucky enough to place as a finalist, you’ll get the benefits that the organisers advertised. The promise for Shore Scripts feature finalists was as follows:

WORK 1:1 WITH OUR WRITER DEVELOPMENT MANAGER
SCRIPT CIRCULATION TO OUR INDUSTRY ROSTER
INDUSTRY MENTORSHIP

So naturally when I heard the good news I was excited to get started on this process. Of course I knew there were no guarantees of success - the contacts they shared my script with might not vibe with my writing, and that would be the end of it – but I expected at least to experience what the timeline sent to finalists called their ‘bespoke and personal approach to script circulation’.

Here’s how that went…

First, I received a link from the Writer Development Manager to book an appointment for our initial call. The link had no available slots on it.

After chasing over a few weeks, I finally got a call in the calendar. But the Writer Development Manager didn’t show up to the call. I emailed him to ask if he was delayed and it turned out he ‘needed to reschedule’ (ie he’d forgotten, presumably).

Two months after placing in the contest, I finally got my introductory call with the Writer Deferment Manager (I’d begun to believe that development wasn’t really his thing, so I’d given him a new job title). At last! Here’s where we really get started. But, guess what - the Writer Disappointment Manager was ten minutes late, was audio only because he was driving, and in place of bespoke guidance he just asked me “Who do you want me to send it to?’. If I’d known that was the approach, I’d have been ready with a list. Though he might have struggled to make a note of it while driving.

Then things went quiet for a while. Two months later, I chased for an update, and the Writer Discouragement Manager finally let me know who he’d reached out to. Three people: One was on maternity leave, one hadn’t replied at all and only one actually had my material to read. I looked up the names and all three were development coordinators at their respective companies. Now, I have absolutely nothing against development coordinators – they’re the development execs of the future and it’s good to be on their radar – but in my opinion this just wasn’t in the spirit of the Shore Scripts promise. I’ve looked back at Shore’s industry roster on their website, and for all three companies the contact named is someone higher up, not the gatekeeper. This smacked of the Writer Deflation Manager effectively making cold calls.

And now we reach the midpoint of this story. There is, of course, a massive plot twist. Out of the blue, there was a bombshell email to all the finalists from the Writer Development Manager (sorry, I’ve run out of jokey adjectives starting with D – dadjectives, if you will). He told us today would be his last day at Shore Scripts. Shore was going to be ‘shifting how they’re running things this year’. So he’d been fired then, I assumed. For sheer incompetence? I admit, I felt somewhat encouraged by the poor guy’s demise. Surely this meant that Shore Scripts recognised the process had been less-than-ideal so far, and the new person would be actively singing my praises to real contacts, carefully selected for their potential interest in my material. Six figure option deals awaited.

Fellow screenwriters, you know as well as I do that a seeming victory at the midpoint is often but a chimera, an unreliable taste of the possibility of success. As night follows day, our protagonist is headed down, down, to their inevitable all-is-lost-point, before they can ever attempt to claim real victory. And so it was that I was ghosted by the replacement Writer Development Manager.

Yep, I sent an email to the new guy, asking if we could review where my material had been sent (knowing full well it had only gone to one development coordinator, but not wanting to start our relationship with a complaint). But no reply. I chased a couple of weeks later. Still nothing.

At this point, I knew that I needed allies – fellow travellers on this journey. So I contacted some of the other finalists on social media to ask about their experiences so far. I managed to connect with three of them. Two had similar experiences and feelings to me. One was more equivocal – they’d made one contact for him that he thought might turn out well. (His script is a horror, and looking at their industry roster I do think they might have better contacts in that space. Worth factoring that in if you’re considering submitting with a horror script.)

And then, from my dark night of the soul, I remembered that when the finalists were first announced, I’d had a congratulatory email from the Director of Contests. Clearly, she was the person to contact. When I wasn’t getting any joy anywhere else, why not go to the top? It was slightly disconcerting that the Director of Contests happened to share a surname with the evil tycoon family in an acclaimed dystopian TV series, but that wasn’t her fault. I was resolute. I was going to go straight to the boardroom and perhaps bring back good news for the others on the severed floor.

Messy friends, at the time of writing it’s not yet clear whether this story will turn around in Act 3. The Director of Contests has been more responsive so far, and says she’s going to reach out to more contacts for me in the coming weeks. I’ll believe that when it’s happened, but a happy ending is still a possibility. Even if this does end well, it’s a shame that I had to make a fuss to get to this point. Certainly there could have been better communication and more transparency. The Director of Contests initially claimed that the previous Writer Development Manager had shared my work with ‘numerous contacts’, but when I asked for a list of who, she never sent it - so I’m pretty sure that so far it’s only gone to that one development coordinator. Hmm.. ‘numerous contacts’. The last time I looked, the word ‘numerous’ meant more than one.

I’m not saying ‘avoid Shore Scripts at all costs’. Despite the frustrating process, I’ve still found placing in a prestigious contest validating, and arguably that alone was worth the $65 entry fee. Everyone will have a different experience, and scripts in genres such as horror might be better suited to the contacts they have. But I thought it might be useful to provide a counter-example to the positive testimonials, for anyone who’s on the fence, or needing that money for another potential writing opportunity, or just – you know - groceries.

If nothing else, I’ve got a story out of it. Hell, should I write the movie of this, and submit it to screenwriting contests? I’d say… Not sure.

Good luck to you all,
Anonymous source + The Messy Women