GUIDELINES
What We're Looking For
To understand how we evaluate short stories for film, please check out this Note on Substack that lays out some basics.
A key to this experiment is not only having trained and experienced film industry professionals read and evaluate your writing. That’s important, but it’s only one factor. The larger goal is to set up a system that gives us 100 stories with an actual chance at adaptation. So, we’re going to establish strict submission parameters and stick to them. Each writer will also complete a detailed survey designed to help us analyze the story effectively by interrogating key questions from the start. Please understand: checking the right boxes is just as important as the quality of the writing.
Do not submit if your story doesn’t fit our criteria.
Strict Rules - No Exceptions
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Submissions will close as soon as we receive 100 eligible entries.
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One submission per writer.
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This search is for Substack writers. Stories must be submitted via a direct link to a Substack post. No paid tier. No submissions by email, PDF, Word document, or any other format.
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Stories must be 5,000 words or less.
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Excerpts from longer works okay, as long as excerpt is 5,000 words or less.
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Stories must fall within one of the following genres: horror, thriller, comedy, science fiction, real-world romance or romantic comedy, mystery, or action/adventure.
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Sorry, but for this search: no hard fantasy, romantasy, or erotica.
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Stories must be set in contemporary times or a recognizable five-minutes-into-the-future setting.
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Sorry, but for this search: no historical fiction, period costume drama, fantastical planets, or unrecognizable far-future worlds.
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Some of these categories are necessarily subjective, so please use your best judgment. If we determine that your story falls outside the criteria, it will not be selected.