Make Sure You Can Answer These Questions About Your Screenplay

Written By Katrina Medoff—Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director, Moonshot Initiative

Congratulations—you’ve written a screenplay, and you’re ready to apply to screenwriting competitions or pitch your idea to development execs!

Or, at least, you think you’re ready.

Before you submit your fellowship application or log on for that pitch meeting, you need to be able to answer these two questions:

• Why are you the person to tackle this project?
• Why is now the best time to tell this story?

Here’s how to prepare your answers to these questions—and why they’re so critical to your contest submission or pitch.

Pitch

Fox

Why are you the person to tackle this project?

Your personal connection to a project helps grab the interest of readers and development executives. Everyone wants to know the backstory of what sparked the idea. Is the series about a topic that you really nerd out about? Is it based on something that happened to you or a family member in real life? Do you have some specialized knowledge that gives you a window into this topic that few people have?

Often, your connection to the project will serve as your ramp into the pitch during a pitch meeting. There are a lot of ways this could play out in practice, but here’s an example from writer Danielle Nicki, one of the fellows for the Moonshot Pilot Accelerator, who was pitching her YA horror pilot. As she chatted with development execs at the beginning of a meeting, she would ask if they had teens in their home, and share that as the mother of teenagers, she often wondered how they would survive on their own. That thought experiment led her to build the world of her young adult zombie series, where teens had to outrun the undead, all while building their own society. By sharing what sparked her idea, she was able to transition from small talk to the pitch itself very naturally.

Not sure how to express your personal connection? Remember, when you sat down to write your script, you could have chosen to write about anything. But you chose this plot and this protagonist because something inside you needed to tell this specific story. Something about this concept captured your attention, and as you wrote and revised your script, you poured your emotions into the characters.

Take some time to journal about the origins of the various threads of your idea. Maybe the protagonist is a young divorcée, just like you, and perhaps you chose to set your project in a specific small town because you drove through it once on a road trip and you began imagining what locals’ lives would be like. Which part of your script’s origin story is the most compelling to share?

Now that you’re ready to share your project with the world, make sure you can express your excitement and your unique ability to tell the story.

‘Wonder Woman’

Warner Bros.

Why is now the best time to tell this story?

When you pitch or submit to a contest, you’ll also want to highlight why now is the best time to tell this story. How do the themes of your project connect to life today? If you wrote a period piece, how do the struggles of the time mirror what people are experiencing in 2024? Does your project touch upon something in the zeitgeist in a new way?

When Moonshot Pilot Accelerator fellow GG Hawkins (host of the No Film School Podcast) was pitching her show Baggage, the Gwyneth Paltrow trial was making headlines. She asked development execs if they had been following the trial as a way to segue into her pitch, since her protagonist was a startup founder with a lot of behind-the-scenes drama. By associating her project with this news item, the writer was to convey that the public is hungry for every detail of celebrity founders’ lives—and that there’s an audience for her script.

There needs to be a reason for viewers to tune in for your content now instead of watching any other film or TV show—or even just scrolling through TikTok. What’s making someone buy a ticket to see your movie in the cinema? What makes your series so topical that everyone will be discussing this week’s episode in the group chat? The timeliness of your project is what makes it feel relevant for audience members today.

‘Office Space’
20th Century Fox

Practice makes perfect.

In some cases, you may need to prepare written responses to “Why you?” and “Why now?” for an application. But most of the time, you’ll want to be able to share these answers in casual conversations, because that’s how you get people excited about your project. When a friend asks you what you’re working on, let them in on the inception of your project and why you’re obsessed with the topic. Get used to nerding out and letting your passion shine through.

Our team at the gender equity nonprofit Moonshot Initiative assesses hundreds of applications each year for our Pilot and Feature Accelerators, and we’ve found that a fantastic script is made even better by a great answer to these questions. Execs and contest decision-makers want to get to know the writer as a person and as a creative, and they want a sense of why this story will resonate with audiences today.

So next time you’re applying to a competition or heading into a general or pitch meeting, remind yourself why you tackled this project and why it needs to be on the big screen. Your passion for the script is contagious, so take advantage of the opportunity to share your deep personal connection to the material. This is your time to shine!

Want to submit your feature-length screenplay to the Moonshot Feature Accelerator? Applications are now open through Dec. 8, 2024! Apply via Coverfly.