Script Frenzy 2011 has come to a close and I wanted to take a quick look back. On a general level, it was great to see the challenge have a higher profile this month with more people talking about it then I’ve seen in past years (including big sites like GalleyCat). With NaNoWriMo hitting bigger numbers then ever before in 2010, I had high hopes for Screnzy 2011. I was really hoping that this was the year that would raise the event’s profile.

Unfortunately, the Amazon cloud crash really killed a lot of the event’s momentum and I know a lot of people who quit early or lost interest because they couldn’t access the site for a few days. I felt awful for the Office of Letters and Light (they’re a non-profit that only does 2 big events a year and it goes down for a full week of one of them? eep!) but there was nothing that could have been done. It’s hard to remember that Script Frenzy is only 5 years old and just doesn’t have the participants or the profile that NaNoWriMo does but losing a week really hurt them, I think.

Also think that the Script Frenzy challenge itself is problematic. For starters, if you really 100% commit to writing every day (like most people do for NaNo) you usually finish way early and, as the early bird winners check out of the forums and chatter, it can kill the momentum of the event. On the flip side, if you are intimidated by the formatting or other details of script writing, you may find the challenge too hard. The other biggest problem is that the event misses the unity of NaNoWriMo since everyone is writing something different. With NaNo, everyone is writing a novel aside from a handful of rebels. With Screnzy, there are 4 different types of scripts even within what is allowable and the experience is very different depending on what you are writing. It makes it a little bit harder to feel part of a community.

Then there’s the 100 pages. It’s a great goal for a screenplay but for comic books or most stage plays, you have to write several shorter works to hit that many pages. I almost wish they would let you track the page count on multiple projects with the total count going to 100 just so people writing the shorter forms still feel involved.

I don’t know how to “fix” it but I do know that the event just doesn’t have the wide appeal of NaNo and I think it could with a little tweaking. What changes would you make to Script Frenzy if it were up to you?

As for me, I intentionally tried to not finish early because, as ML, it would be a total kill joy if I was finished while the rest of my area was still moving steadily along. So I tried to stay as close to “on pace” as possible. Writing a script with the dictation program was very annoying but, luckily, I was able to do the writing in Word (which plays nicest with DNS) and then import into Celtx which only lost me a few minutes per writing session. Here’s my official Screnzy graph:

I also used my Script Frenzy Calc to make another graph that makes more visual sense to me.

It really shows how I got a little underwater for a bit on the middle there. Also, that I’m still a total binge writer. Script Frenzy added 25,000 + words to my count for the year as well which was nice.

As for my script, well, it’s a mess as first drafts usually are. 🙂 I mentioned before that I originally outlined it to be a novel and just wanted to try it as a play and I’m still not sure which it’s meant to be. I have a horrible feeling I may need to write it as a novel to be able to write it as a play instead of the other way around as I was hoping. But, on the plus side, at least I’ve fleshed my thoughts on it out a bit so whenever I am ready to write it again (be it as a novel or play or both) I’m that much closer.

Now that Screnzy 2011 has ended, what are your thoughts on the challenge? How did you do? What would you change? What would you keep the same?