It’s every screenwriter’s dream to enter a screenwriting competition and get an agent. But what happens when you don’t win? It’s an unfortunate reality that every writer faces, but screenwriter Yukio Hori, who was “born in Tokyo, raised in Portland, and raised in New York,” found a way to make competition notes work for him.
After graduating from NYU’s film department, Hori worked in Japanese productions in the United States. While writing and producing over 200 episodes of comedy shows in four years, Hori remains committed to his dream of creating noteworthy projects for the American film industry. One way he does this is by writing a film every year and religiously submitting it to the most noteworthy competition he can find.
Horry sat down with screenwriting career coach Lee Jessup to share how screenwriting competitions helped him build his screenwriting portfolio and find future hits.
Using contests as a screenwriting tool
Not all contests are created equal, which means writers need to focus on which contests are worth their time and money.
Each year, Hori targets six screenwriting competitions, which finalists and winners have used to advance their careers. That meant sitting down and researching competitions that aligned with his screenwriting goals.
The next step is to prepare a feature film script for submission.
“On average, every year, I have a feature script. I look at all the deadlines, usually the final one, and plan when the draft will be ready,” Hori said. Helpful, setting a deadline is important – you can work on something forever, or you can put off writing a script indefinitely, so setting that deadline can be really helpful.
Each year, Hori would rewrite the script he submitted the previous year while creating another original script. When competition deadlines come, he submits all his scripts to see what the industry thinks of his work.
“That’s my strategy: focus on the most prestigious competitions that I know will help get my scripts into the hands of industry producers or representatives,” Hori noted.
Read more: How this screenwriting competition finalist turned rankings into career wins
Generous prizes for competitions
Eventually, Hori’s strategy began to pay off. Several of his screenplays were finalists in the prestigious competitions he entered, and one even caught the attention of his future manager at Bellevue Productions.
“It’s a little unusual because it’s the first script I’ve officially written, finished and felt good about completely on my own. It didn’t do well in the competition – my other scripts did better – but was rewritten based on feedback Then it made it to the finals,” Hori said.
Surprisingly, it was this script that took some time to make it to the finals that caught the attention of one of the judges, who was reading all the shortlisted scripts.
“[My rep] Is one of the shortlisted judges. Although he didn’t win, he contacted me shortly after it was announced and said he liked the script and wanted to talk about it. That conversation eventually led to the agent asking to represent Hori. “I hit it off right away with him because I felt like he understood what I was doing and was someone I could hang out with.”
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Opening doors that help you advance your screenwriting career takes time, money, and a lot of rewriting. But it’s this feedback that can help you shape your current script (and the dozen other scripts you’ve written over the years) into the best version you need before it gets into the hands of judges. You never know when one of the judges will be inspired by your work and ready to help you launch your writing career.
Read more: How to Win a Screenwriting Contest, Competition or Scholarship
