In a little under two hours, the third Scriptfrenzy will begin and we'll all be that much closer to fame and fortune.

If you're like me, you came over here from nanowrimo - either two minutes ago or two years ago - and most of your writing experience is concerned with the novel. Never fear, the good folks at the office of letters and lights have put together an awesome set of primers for you under the writer's resources tab. Also useful if you know what you're doing but want to procrastinate for a while.

I personally recommend celtx for a scriptwriting word processor. It's not as fully featured as final draft, but it's also free and has worked well for me the last two years. I've run it under windows, osx and linux and it's pretty solid.

If you prefer a web-based solution, there are a couple recommendations under 'writer's resources.'

For my part, scripts aren't really my thing, but I have had fun putting them together over the last two scriptfrenzies. If you're new to this, you'll probably notice that a hundred pages comes together a lot easier than fifty thousand words during November. Once you get the formatting down, it's a lot of fun.

This year I finally bought a copy of David Trottier's Screenwriter's Bible which is a wealth of information. If you're looking for a good book on the subject, I'd definitely check this one out. There's a lot of really useful information, from plotting out your story to formatting to how to actually write a spec script (and what a spec script is, if you're unfamiliar with the terminology.)

There are also a lot of competitions out there that can either put a few dollars in your hand or put your script in front of bigwig hollywood producers &c., more to come on that later. It would be more to come on that NOW, but the laptop with the relevant bookmarks no longer turns on, and I'm way too ill right now to have the requisite staying power to look everything up again. There are also one or two fellowships for first-time screenwriters that are probably worth a shot.

If you have any questions over the next thirty days - about the site, screenwriting, life in general - feel free to hit me up on PM or email. It's what I'm here for.