2025 Script and Film Competitions’ Early Bird Deadline is one week out!

The 2025 AFF Script and Film Competitions’ Early Bird Deadline is 11:59PM CDT on Tuesday, March 25th, and there is no better time than now to submit your latest project! Looking for a little inspiration before you hit SUMBIT? Here’s some advice from your peers who have leveraged their competition success into flourishing careers and have been recognized in one of our previous Screenwriters to Watch lists. Published annually by AFF and a major trade, the list showcases the success of emerging writers who come through the script and film competitions. 

1.) Finish. Just finish it and send it out. It’s the scariest thing to send a script to your team or to people to read. Its much more vulnerable even than doing an audition because in your mind with acting, you can always fall back on other peoples words, the director, the casting director….but with writing your own work, it’s ALL you. If something isn’t working YOU need to fix it. It’s very scary but also incredibly rewarding when it goes well. I’ve always just learned to sit down, focus and finish. If you don’t finish it, nothing will ever happen good or bad.
– Megan Park, 2017 Screenwriter to Watch (Writer/Director, My Old Ass) 

2.) At some point, pulling an all-nighter to hit a deadline isn’t an option. I have face planted into a subway column before—I know of what I speak.
– Jenny Turner Hall, 2018 Screenwriter to Watch (Writer/Director, Marvel’s Waterlanders: Wolverine)

3.) Good things take time.
– Mac Smullen, 2024 Screenwriter to Watch (Creator, Souvenir, Alaska) 

4.) Always, always, always be writing something. Don’t be content to lean on your last sample – write something new. If you’re a writer, you should probably enjoy writing!
– VJ Boyd, 2016 Screenwriter to Watch (Writer Justified, S.W.A.T., The Player)

5.) I’ve created countless pilots, series, screenplays, and feature pitches that went nowhere and will never see the light of day. You have to be prepared to create worlds you love and then leave them behind. That’s just the job. But at least we’re in this together.
– Dan Steele, 2022 Screenwriters to Watch (Writer Pretty Big, Retreat!, Gossip Girl) 

6.) To let the story guide you, not to force the story into a conclusion you want it to have. If you do your job right, the characters will start acting of their own volition and you can follow them where they want to go. And to finish the damn draft. Every screenplay seems impossible to finish at some point and the easiest thing to do is abandon it.
– Clint Bentley, 2017 Screenwriter to Watch (Writer, Sing Sing) 

7.) The biggest lesson I’ve learned is that writing is WORK! Gone are the days of waiting for that inspirational moment to strike. I have kids, and time management is vital. I can’t wait around – I have to sit myself down and write, even if whatever I write is initially garbage. And once that script is done, then it’s time to revise, and get notes, and revise again and again and again, until it’s lean and mean and in fighting form. It’s work, and it’s a job, and it’s the best job in the world.
– Geeta Malik, 2017 Screenwriter to Watch (Writer, India Sweets and Spices

Writers from our Screenwriters to Watch list know all too well that perseverance is key and have trekked various paths to where they are now. Writers have gone on to work in writers rooms such as Michael Schur’s A Man on the Inside (2021 SW2W Sylvia Batey Alcala) and The Duffer Brothers’ Stranger Things (2018 SW2W Caitlin Schneiderhan). Some have had the opportunity to work with their heroes (check out 2017 SW2W Glen Powell’s quote about dreams of working with Richard Linklater, which came to fruition with 2023’s Hitman) or have even gone on to receive Academy Award nominations (2017 SW2W, Greg Kwedar and Clint Bentley, Sing Sing).  

Whether you want your future to look like 2016 SW2W Jared Frieder’s (writer/ director Three Months streaming on Paramount+), or have your work optioned by a major studio like Warner Bros TV (2024 SW2W Mac Smullen’s Souvenir, Alaska) we want to help you take your next steps.

2025 Script Competition Deadlines:

3/25/25 Early Bird Deadline: Features, Teleplays, Podcast, Scripted Digital Series, Playwrighting
4/22/25 Regular Deadline: Features, Teleplays, Scripted Digital Series, Podcast, Playwrighting
5/28/25 Late Deadline: Features, Teleplays, Scripted Digital Series, Podcast, Playwrighting
7/8/25 Extended Deadline: Scripted Digital Series & Fiction Podcast Only