in other news, the return of 3pages, yay!
3PAGES is a comedy scene
writing competition
for screenwriters.
Anyone may enter.
The prize is a $375 AFW class.
Interested? Read on —
WHAT TO ENTER: A one to three page scene or scene sequence. It must be comedy. It must be original. And it must be written by you. Content is up to you but the judges do not really go for slapstick and bathroom humor. We do not care about genre — if it is comedy you are in. Public figures are fair game if it is satirical — but we are sort of tired of Elvis jokes. Characters owned and copyrighted by other individuals [for example Bat Man] may only be used if the entry is satire.
WHAT IT COSTS TO ENTER: Three bucks. We thought about it a lot and it just seemed like you should be making some sort of commitment here so three bucks is it. We’re calling this a submission fee. It will offset the cost of tuition for the classes we are giving away.
WHAT YOU GET OUT OF THIS IF YOU WIN: You win a free AFW class. Yay! That is $375 right there. Also winning entries are published on the AFW site and we make a fuss over you. [Classes for winners are classes offered in July, September, and November, 2012. Your choice. All classes are online classes so, you know, if you are in Sweden? No biggy. You are still in.]
WHAT YOU GET OUT OF THIS IF YOU DO NOT WIN: Well you don’t get a thing if you do not win. Sorry about that.
WHAT WE GET OUT OF THIS: Well, we do not expect to get rich. Three bucks is just not going to sponsor a cruise. It will offset the cost of tuition for the classes we are giving away and some of the processing time and reading time and band width going up in flames here. But. We are in it for notoriety. People like competitions. People talk about competitions. It’s a win/win situation. Word of mouth for us — free classes for you. Yay!
HOW MANY WINNERS ARE THERE: There are up to three winners. [We’re assuming at least three people will enter here but if not? You do the math.] Three pages, three bucks, three winners worked out for us. This is not a huge competition so we do not expect to be overwhelmed with entries. But it’s fun, it’s low rent, and you get a free class if you win. Excellent!
WHO ARE THE JUDGES: The judges are Max and/or writers selected by Max. Max is the final judge and her decisions are final.
WHAT DO THE JUDGES LOOK FOR: Good writing and funny scenes. Also we expect you to know what a screenplay looks like and format accordingly.
WHAT FEEDBACK CAN YOU EXPECT: Well, if you do not win, none. Sorry. If you do win, you will get plenty of feedback in class so do not sweat feedback, if you win there is plenty of feedback on your fast approaching horizon.
WHAT YOU AGREE TO BY ENTERING THREE PAGES: You agree that your submitted scene(s) may be published on the AFW website and/or its message board and sister websites [we have a scary website empire here, if you want more info, visit the forum and ask]. You agree that your name and scene(s) may be used by AFW for promotional and educational purposes. You promise that you understand submitted pages will not be returned to you and swear on a stack of bibles you kept a copy. You swear up and down you understand submission fees will not be returned even if you disqualify yourself and you will not whine about it. You understand contest judging is subjective and the judges’ decisions are final and if you win you win and if you lose you lose and that is the way it is. You guarantee the pages you are submitting are written by you and you only and your property and you did not swipe them off the internet or anywhere else.
THE RULES: You may enter more than once but each submission requires its own entry form and submission fee. We know you could cheat this but we are going on the honor system here. We have faith in you. You can only win once so if your submission comes in in the top three and you have submitted other page sets, other page sets submitted by you will be set aside so two other people get a chance too. Scenes must be submitted in screenplay format and that means twelve point Courier font with real screenplay margins. No writing partners. Sorry. There is no way to share a seat in the class. No posting entries on the message board. If you do that the administrators will evaporate your post in two seconds. Also, you must be over 18, or have the consent of a legal guardian to enter this competition — or be independent so, you know, no legal guardian is going to sue our asses over luring you to the Hollywood side.
HOW TO GET THROWN OUT OF THE COMPETITION RIGHT OFF: If your entry is over three pages, you are out of there. [Heads up UK, that means US pages, 8.5 x 11 inches, format accordingly.] If your scene is not in script format, you are out of there. If your scene is not funny, you are out of there. If your entry is not submitted as a PDF you are out of there. If your entry is submitted without an entry form and/or submission fee, you are out of there. If you swiped your entry from someone or somewhere else and we catch you doing it [and we will] you are out of there. If you submit a full length script we promise we can spot the difference between three pages and a full length script and you are out of there.
DATES & TIMELINES: Entries must be received by March 31, 2012. Winners will be announced on or around May 15, 2012.
NEWS & UPDATES: Updates and news about the competition will be posted on the AFW News Page. Winning and featured entries will be posted here on the blog. Questions and comments should be posted in the AFW forum.
HOW TO SUBMIT YOUR SCENE/SCENE SEQUENCE: Go to the bottom of this page where it says “Sounds good to me.”
•Click the link.
•Send in your three bucks. (this goes in via Paypal)
•You will be redirected to a page with the link to the entry form on it.
•Copy and paste the entry form into an email — and fill in the blanks.
•Place the page number and your email address in the upper right corner of each page in your submission just in case it gets separated from the submission email.
•Attach your entry as a PDF to your email and send it in to the email address provided on the entry form.
ARE SUBMISSIONS ANONYMOUS: No, sorry. We can’t pretend we don’t know who you are. We do know. We will not hold it against you.
HOW YOU KNOW YOUR SUBMISSION ARRIVED: We are doing a fancy auto responder at the 3Pages mail box so when your submission comes in, you will get a nice note telling you so.
HOW YOU KNOW WE READ YOUR SUBMISSION: Because we said so. Really, that’s all you get. We’re taking it on faith you paid for that submission form. You’re taking it on faith we read the material. [Hint: We do. We’re actually looking for talented people here. We like talented people. They are the most fun in class.]
GENERAL CAVEATS AND FINE PRINT: We reserve the right to extend deadlines and/or announcement dates. Class dates do at times shift for unforeseen reasons. [Blame the whacky film industry.] If this happens, we’ll make arrangements with you to place you in another class you want to take. In the event some egregious oversight on our part comes up in relation to these rules, regs, and general competition guidelines, we reserve the right to amend them — and worst case scenario, if you win and things are so out of whack no reasonable alternative we offer you works for you, hey, we’ll give you back your three bucks.
THAT SOUNDS GOOD TO ME: :::GO TO 3PAGES:::