Did you just wrap up a novel for NaNoWriMo? Or are you just looking for a bit of creative mayhem to spice up your spring? The next great creative writing adventure will set sail on April 1 here at Script Frenzy. We'll be celebrating the fifth year of the Frenzy with all-new bits of fun and inspiration, and look forward to writing movies, plays, TV shows, and graphic novels alongside tens of thousands of participants!

The Wrap Party here in The Bay Area featured Killing My Lobster, a San Francisco sketch comedy troupe, performing excerpts from local participants' scripts.

We'd love to see pictures from your end-of-event celebrations! Head on over to our Facebook page, see more pictures from the party, and post your own Frenzy-finale photos!

I hope you're still glowing from your Script Frenzy triumph. Even if you didn't finish, I know you wrote more this April that you otherwise would have. I also hope that there's still evidence of a grand celebration to remind you of your awesome adventure (confetti, streamers, or a leftover shoe maybe).

Now that the party is over, some of you might be feeling a sense of emptiness or loss. And why wouldn't you? You've spent a month with a new set of people and characters and now you don't know what the plan is. Will they call? Will you write? These feelings of loss and sorrow are known as The Post-Script Frenzy Blues.

The Post-Script Frenzy Blues (PSFB) are common and widespread (no matter how many pages you wrote). There are a few things you can do to combat them. I'll be sending you short and sweet emails over the next few weeks highlighting chapters in a book I call Frenzied Forever! Your Guide to Conquering PSFB.

Before hitting the next draft, think about what story your 100 pages added up to. Can you tell a friend about it in a minute or less? In a sentence?

Try crafting your logline and elevator pitch before you hit the next draft. It's a great way to identify the holes of your script as you enter the revision phase.

Think of it like putting guide rails on your creative vision.

For inspiration, check out what your fellow Script Frenzy participants did for their elevator pitches and, if you're curious, learn what an elevator pitch is, at our YouTube home page!

This was the first year of our Elevator Pitch Challenge, and we're so pumped about our Script Frenzy participants who pioneered the way. Thank you to everyone who participated! (We'll be making some tweaks and improvements for next year.)

Daniel Heath, playwright and Script Frenzy Cameo writer, sent over this perfectly perfect flow chart of the writing process.

View larger

It's Week Four! Everyone in the office (and the consultants and board members) is full of mixed feelings--both excitement and dread. Here is the final checkpoint before winning starts to happen!

In reverse alphabetical order by first name...

Shawn Gray is one of our many inspiring Municipal Liaisons for Script Frenzy! He and his fellow Script Frenzy participants in Sudbury, Ontario are doing some amazing things up in beautiful Canada. Here, in his own words, Shawn tells us how he got pulled into Script Frenzy's orbit and grew to love throwing some pretty bangin' events!

When Script Frenzy launched in June 2007, I was all over it. I was excited, and I was alone. As much as I wanted to get something out of it, it's a lot harder to keep yourself going without a group of people checking up on you to make sure you succeed. I missed the activity, and the camaraderie that I had found in Ottawa during the first years of NaNo, or in North Bay where I was helping to get things going. In 2008, I put up some flyers around Timmins, but there was little interest in writing.

Diann Tongco is one of our busiest Municipal Liaisons. Along with planning Script Frenzy write-ins and events for Riverside County, Diann runs a local writing group and teaches a creative writing class for middle school students. To make it even more exciting, her students are participating in Script Frenzy this year! To read about how she does it all, continue on!

1. So it sounds like you are really well-plugged into a community of writers: You're teaching creative writing to a middle school and part of a local writing group. How has Script Frenzy played into that?

Script Frenzy and NaNoWriMo led directly to my volunteer gig at the middle school. In an effort to get more participants in Script Frenzy (and because I was the ML for California's Inland Empire - both Riverside and San Bernardino counties, or the largest region in the continental US) I sent an email to our local library.

I set up a meeting with the wonderful Rebecca Weersing of the Friends of the Temecula Library and with her guidance, I formed a local writing group. We started out meeting monthly for three months leading up to Script Frenzy and NaNo and now have decided to meet on a year-round basis.

Welcome to Week Three! Most of the busy bees here in the office (and the consultants and board members) are taking part alongside you this April. We'll be checking in with them a few times throughout the month to see how their scripts are coming along.

In reverse alphabetical order by first name...

April is half over. Do you know where your story is going? The Elevator Pitch Challenge continues!
Stop by the forum to find out more.

1 2 3 4 next › last »