[Watch the video interview on YouTube here]
Kelli McNeil-Yellen, Actor, Executive Producer, Writer, and Public Relations: I know a lot of people don’t put a lot of stock into the competitions, but I do think that as a new screenwriter, as someone who’s finding your way and finding your process, if you can afford to enter them, it’s invaluable because what will happen is you will get reader feedback on some of them and you can start tracking your progress.
For me, I did my first draft and I believe it was a semi- finalist in the ScreenCraft fellowship.
Then from there I was like, Okay, well this it’s not terrible. It’s okay.
I started to work on it more. I tweaked it. I would enter it in different competitions. It became a second rounder at the Austin Film Festival. It became a top 15% Nicholl finalist.
All of these different iterations. I would take the feedback and I would incorporate it into the script.
That’s not to say that I would change my vision or my storyline or the characters, but the readers really do take a lot of time to put in valuable notes, especially in those top competitions like AFF, Nicholl and ScreenCraft, too.
I took the notes and I would incorporate it. It’s very easy to get discouraged and disagree with somebody when they try to give you notes. I think it stunts you as a writer. You have to be open. You have to know when to not compromise your vision, but you also have to know when to be open to taking feedback.
I allowed myself to do that process and fail for three years with this one story. I was kind of mucking about with other ideas, too. Eventually I got notification that this was…(Watch the video interview on YouTube here).
Advertisement – contains affiliate links
(As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases)
New book from Film Courage! – See it on Payhip here
New book from Film Courage! – See it on Payhip here
