2021 Zero Draft Thirty March Challenge: Day 1

One month. FADE IN to FADE OUT. Creativity meets Productivity.

Zero Draft Thirty: Day 1.

Write an entire draft of a script in March — FADE IN. FADE OUT. Or any sort of creative goal you have in front of you.

Feature length movie screenplay. Original TV pilot. Rewrite a current project. Break a story in prep. Generate a month’s worth of story concepts.

Whatever you feel will ratchet your creative ambitions into overdrive…

DO THAT!

As for me, I am using the Challenge to do a final polish of my book Introduction to Character Driven Screenwriting and Storytelling: The Protagonist’s Journey. My goal is to send the 300+ page manuscript to the publisher Palgrave Macmillan by the end of the month.

If you join the Challenge, I will be right there with you writing each and every day in March! Let’s do this together!

Download your very own Zero Draft Thirty calendar — designed and created by Steven Dudley — and track your daily progress!

On Twitter, use this hashtag: #ZD30SCRIPT.

Join the Zero Draft Thirty Facebook Group: Here. 4,200+ members strong.

Today’s Writing Quote

“Show up, show up, show up, and after a while the muse shows up, too.”

— Isabel Allende

Today’s Inspirational Video

Setup: This young fellow just rode a bicycle for the first time. Here are his words of inspiration:

I feel happy of myself. Everybody, I know you can believe in yourself. If you believe in yourself, you will know how to ride a bike. If you don’t, you just keep practicing. You will get the hang of it, I know it. If you keep practicing, you will get the hang of it, and then you can get better and better at it. Thumbs up everybody, rock and roll.

That is the spirit of the Zero Draft approach to writing. Believe in yourself and just keep at it. Let this video be your spirit guide throughout the next month!

Today’s Anita Loos Award winner: Kim Turner.

I posted something in the Zero Draft Thirty Facebook group page, asking if there were any success stories from folks who had written a project from a previous #ZD30SCRIPT Challenge. Kim responded with this:

‘Dinner with the Queen’ was borne of ZD30! It’s my feature comedy and was selected to Stowe Story Labs in 2020! Wouldn’t have happened without you! I will also join the Zero Draft Thirty event in March!!

Getting accepted into the Stowe Story Labs is a big deal. Now in its 9th year, it offers writers a great opportunity to workshop their stories and take them to the next level.

This is one example of how a writer can embrace the Zero Draft Thirty Challenge, get something down on the page, then revise and refine it, and send it out into the world to see what happens. People have had ZD30 scripts place well in the Nicholl competition, optioned by producers, even moving toward film production.

For this inspiration, the recipient of today’s Anita Loos Award is Kim Turner.

For background on Anita Loos, go here.

For your chance to win the Loos Award, one given away each day during the Challenge, post something inspiring, here on the blog, via Twitter, or the Facebook group.

Congratulations, Kim!

For background on how the Zero Draft Challenge came into being and what it is, go here, here, and here.

Now Zeronauts, Scampers, Word Warriors, and Outlaws…

GO WRITE!