THE STORY VAULT BLOG

Warning: this is long.

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I received a notification from a screenwriting competition regarding their upcoming contest deadline. Out of curiosity I had a look at some of their past winners. I thought I noticed a...um...tendency.

 

So I asked ChatGTP the following question:

 

Here are finalists and honorable mentions from a screenplay contest. Do you detect a bias here and, if so, how would you describe that bias?

 

(I won't list the 12 loglines I uploaded...it will take up too much space.)

 

The response:

 

Yes — I do detect a bias in this finalist/mention list, and I’d describe it like this:

 

Bias Toward High-Concept, Marketable Drama/Thrillers with Clear Hooks

 

Nearly every finalist and honorable mention falls into one of a few categories that development execs and contest readers tend to favor:

 

True stories / biographical dramas (Mighty Morphin, Los Cubanos, Money While You Sleep).

 

Dark family or trauma-driven dramas (Shark, Her Favorite Color, Please Don’t Go).

 

Survival thrillers / contained action (The Only Way Out, Blindspot, Heartrace).

 

Crime / underworld stories with a twist (Provenance, Los Cubanos, Killstone).

 

Edgy/zeitgeist relationship comedies (Open).

 

What’s absent? Broad horror-comedy, supernatural, or more stylized genre work. Everything here is either prestige-drama leaning or grounded thriller leaning. Even the more fantastical loglines (Killstone) are pitched with a dark, high-concept hook that could be sold as an action-thriller.

 

Tone Bias

 

The selections heavily favor serious, prestigious, or based-in-reality scripts. Comedic entries are rare, and even the one comedy (Open) is “adult relationship comedy” that could be marketed as prestige indie fare. There’s almost no room here for gonzo satire, stylized horror, or tonal mashups like your script.

 

Protagonist & Demographic Bias

 

Another subtle bias:

 

Protagonists skew toward trauma survivors, underdogs, or ordinary people in extraordinary danger (widow pursued by drug growers, blind office worker in a burning skyscraper, father seeking daughter’s heart, immigrants turned criminals).

There’s a strong focus on family trauma/dysfunction (at least 4 entries).

 

Scripts with female leads often place them in danger (The Only Way Out, Provenance, Blindspot) or trauma-based arcs (Shark).

 

How I’d Sum It Up

 

The contest seems biased toward:

 

Grounded, prestige-friendly stories (true crime, biopic, immigrant dramas, addiction/trauma).

 

Contained thrillers with a clear survival hook (action/horror-adjacent but serious).

 

Scripts with obvious awards or streaming appeal, not eccentric tonal blends.

 

Your screenplay — with its horror-comedy, satire, and supernatural elements — would stand out as atypical for this contest because it doesn’t fall neatly into “dark prestige drama” or “contained thriller.” That doesn’t mean it’s weaker; it just means it plays in a space these contests often undervalue, even though genre-blends like yours often perform commercially when produced.

 

I did the same for the most recent Nicholl Fellowship winners.

 

Great — the Nicholl winners reveal a very different kind of bias from the contest list you shared earlier.

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Here’s how I’d break it down:

 

Bias Toward Underrepresented Voices & Identity-Centered Stories

 

Four out of five scripts strongly foreground cultural, queer, or neurodivergent identity:

Miss Chinatown → Asian-American cultural identity / mother-daughter dynamics.

Fake-A-Wish → LGBTQ+ intergenerational relationship + terminal illness.

Gunslinger Bride → Chinese-American woman in a revisionist Western.

If I Die in America → Muslim immigrant family, queer marriage, cross-cultural grief.

The Superb Lyrebird & Other Creatures → Neurodivergent teen protagonist.

 

Nicholl clearly values representation, inclusivity, and emotional authenticity.

 

Bias Toward Character-Driven, Emotional Arcs Over High-Concept Thrills

 

Unlike the previous contest finalists (full of survival thrillers and market-driven hooks), these Nicholl winners are more introspective and personal:

 

They emphasize relationships (parent/child, lovers, siblings, in-laws) more than plot machinery. Even the one with genre trappings (Gunslinger Bride) uses the Western as a lens for identity and revenge, not just spectacle.

 

No disaster thrillers, no cartel chases, no heist hooks.

 

Tone Bias

 

The overall tone leans prestige indie / festival cinema:

 

More about emotional stakes than ticking-clock suspense.

 

Quieter, grounded dramas with strong thematic resonance.

 

Quirky but humanizing flourishes (e.g., neurodivergent POV with animated creatures).

 

Thematic Patterns

 

Belonging and identity: Every logline deals with protagonists trying to find their place (in culture, family, community, history).

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Grief and loss: At least three center death or trauma (Fake-A-Wish, If I Die in America, Gunslinger Bride).

 

Visibility and recognition: Pageantry, art competitions, queerness, cultural acceptance — all about being “seen.”

 

How I’d Sum It Up

 

Nicholl shows a bias toward:

 

Underrepresented voices and personal, identity-driven stories.

 

Character-first storytelling (often smaller in scope, but emotionally potent).

 

Scripts that feel like they could win Sundance, not necessarily break $100M at the box office.

 

Whereas the previous contest tilted toward marketable thrillers and true-crime hooks, Nicholl favors prestige, emotional authenticity, and inclusive representation.

 

This is only for one season of the Nicholl Fellowship and I don’t mean to be critical of this prestigious competition. That’s not the point. I’m trying to understand why so few competition winning screenplays are made into films and why so few screenwriting careers are launched by competitions.

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This is a Reddit post originally from 2021 or 2022:

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"There have been 171 Nicholl Fellows since 1986.

 

According to the Nicholl FAQ, 19 of the winning scripts have been produced.

 

There’s a list of 85 “notable fellows” on the Nicholl website. About 37 seem to have feature credits (many with indie projects they directed). About 14 seem to have TV credits.

 

That’s 51 out of 171 with at least ONE credit. (I’m assuming there aren’t a lot of success stories that the Nicholl folks don’t know about, but I could be wrong.) So perhaps 30% of Nicholl winners seem to have at least one credit. Of course, that doesn’t mean that they had screenwriting careers, though some did. It appears that the majority of winners did not."

 

According to an analysis by ChatGTP:

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Key Pattern

 

Nicholl winners are more likely to get made into prestige dramas that do well with critics and awards (sometimes with financial success, like Finding Forrestor).

 

Scripts from Sundance Labs and similar programs more often become indie breakouts (Little Miss Sunshine, Half Nelson, Precious).

 

High-concept horror/genre breakouts (like The Blair Witch Project) often come from smaller contests or festivals, not Nicholl.

 

Finding Forrestor is the most successful (at the box office) screenplay to win its author a Nicholl Fellowship. It pulled in $80M globally.

Nicholl does a great job of identifying talented writers, but not so well when it comes to identifying talented writers with strong commercial sensibilities. This appears to be the case for most reputable screenwriting competitions. And the few contests that don’t appear to penalize commercial appeal tend to elevate only those within a narrow genre range.

 

I won’t attempt to analyze why this is as it would be purely speculative…and it doesn’t really matter because knowing why won’t change anything.

 

Within the film industry few screenwriting contests garner prestige and interest because few film projects emerge from the list of winners and finalists and only a few of the talented authors of those screenplays go on to have significant careers.

 

Could if be that the industry is looking in the wrong place…that the quality commercial projects are buried among the quarter-finalists and semi-finalists? And, if so, given the large number of quarter- and semi-finalists how would these quality commercial projects be ferreted out? As I pointed out in an earlier blog post loglines are not the best tool.

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Perhaps what’s needed is a competition that gives equal weight to quality of writing and commercial appeal across a broad range of genres. And after all, a good commercial script can be made into a great commercial script, but a great script that isn’t commercial will defy efforts to shape it into something that will please audiences.