If you are new to Screnzy, you may not realize that verifying yourself as a winner isn’t as simple as just changing your word count to over 100 pages in the little update window. While your bar will change colors automatically when you pass 100 words, you won’t get the official winner goodies and the little winner status bar until you go through the verification process.
How to verify your Script Frenzy script:
- Log into your Screnzy account at http://www.scriptfrenzy.org/
- Click the “My Script Frenzy” tab on the top of the page.
- On the left hand navbar, click “Edit Writer Info.”
- On this page you will see an upload form called “Page Count Validator.” But before you try to verify, I need to warn you that this form only accepts PDF. Now if you already know how to convert to PDF, just go ahead and do this now and upload the finished file. As long as it is over 100 pages, you will be verified as a winner.
Good to know tip: Once you have verified your script, you can go back to changing your page count manually and you will keep your winner verification at long as the number you put in is over 100 pages. Did your PDF come out to only 100 pages but you wrote 3 pages the next day? No problem! Just add the new page count in the update field at the top of every page and it will keep your winner verification.
But I don’t know how to convert to PDF!
No problem! If you don’t already know how to print a file to PDF, let me teach you an effective little shortcut that works great for verification. If you are using Microsoft Word, Google Docs or Open Office, most doc
formats are fine to begin with so you don’t need to export anything. If you are using Celtx or similar program, go ahead and export your script to HTML or TXT (RTF would be best, if it is an option). If you want to scramble your manuscript, go ahead and do that now.
Now go to the handy free site Zamzar. Then go to the Zamzar website (no sign-up needed), upload the file and then under the format select PDF and then add your email and hit convert. They will email you in a few minutes when they have converted the file to PDF. Sure, it will probably mess up all your formatting but who cares? the only point of this is to verify your page count.
Once you’ve uploaded your document to Zamzar and it has spit back the PDF file, go back to the steps above and upload your file to verify.
But my script was X pages and the PDF says it was Y pages!
There may be a discrepancy (up or down) between the PDF and the original document’s page count. That is OK. Remember the tip above. Once you use that PDF to verify on the site, you can just edit the page count in the update field at the top of every page. As long as the number is still over 100 pages, the winner verification will still “stick.”
Super lazy way
Maybe you don’t feel like converting your script to PDF. Maybe you have your script in many small documents and don’t want to have to put it all together. Do you have any PDF of over 100 pages handy? If so, just upload that to force the site to verify and then manually correct your page count in the update field at the top of every page to the length your script really is. This isn’t cheating. You still wrote over 100 pages, you just are using another document to jump through the verification hoops.
Any questions? Let me know below and I will help out as needed.
Hillary DePiano is a playwright, fiction and non-fiction writer who loves writing of all kinds except for writing bios like this.
