After a little writing exercise tonight with another writer, we’ve both decided to take on our own 48-Hour Screenwriting Challenge. It’s more of a gentleman’s wager at this point, but we’re both excited about it. The primary purpose is, of course, to see if we can do it. Of course it’s also really fun and exciting. Plus, I know from past experience that it can be done, no matter what some people may tell you about writing a script taking 3 months. This is somewhat similar to the Nanowrimo contest for novelists, but a little more compressed.

I think these kinds of challenges are good and really help a writer test their limits of creativity and imagination. It also helps build trust with another writer. The trick that I learned was to not think of the deadline or the number of pages per hour you’d have to turn out to hit your mark, but rather to put yourself into a bubble of creativity, make the script world your own world for those 2 days. Don’t even think about a mark to hit and you’ll get there. It’s a lot like love: it’ll find you when you’re not looking for it.

That’s not to say this is for everybody. There are many who do work better at a naturally slow pace, who type slowly but methodically. If that’s you, then this challenge won’t work.

I thought I would post it up here just so people can hear about trying something new. It’s informal, with only a few rules right now, but we do have some structure to it.

The rules are very simple right now:

• The challenge will begin at 12:01am on a Saturday. You must stop writing at 12:01am Monday morning, no matter what.
• Scripts must be a between 74 and 120 pages, inclusive.
• Genre of script is decided at officiation time on Friday afternoon by a third party. From that point forward until midnight, the writer may prepare for the screenplay.
• The Officiator will decide each writer’s genre by coin toss to maintain non-bias. If one or both writers cannot be present during officiation (i.e., across the country), presence by phone will suffice.
• Upon completion on Monday, each writer sends their script to the other. The rest of the month will be used to edit each other’s work.

Since this is the first time around, the other writer and I will use the J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis challenge: the flip of a coin will decide which genre each writer gets. Heads means I get fantasy, the other writer gets space saga. Tails, I get space saga and he gets fantasy.

I’ll let you know how this turns out come Monday.