How I judge a screenplay writing contest

If I was appalled by the writing of these scripts, I was impressed by the stories. All of these writers had stories to tell that were worth telling. However, this made their writing problems tragic because they had become their own worst enemies. Every screenwriter here had committed the cardinal sin of letting the writing get in the way of the story. As a reader for a production company, I wouldn't have stayed with any of these scripts long enough to appreciate the story. These writers were thinking like fiction writers, not screenwriters. In fact, they didn't seem to comprehend that a screenplay is a blueprint for a movie -- that is, unless they were directing the movie themselves. 

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